Hartling murder conviction to stand — appeal court

Bernard Hartling is led to a sheriff's van in this 2011 photo. Hartling’s appeal of his September 2011 conviction for second-degree murder was dismissed on Monday. (MICHAEL GORMAN / Truro Bureau)

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of a man convicted of second-degree murder.

Bernard Frederick Hartling was appealing his conviction after a September 2011 murder trial for the shooting death of Kenneth McNamara. On Nov. 14, 2009, while sitting in his pickup truck, Hartling shot McNamara in the face with a shotgun at the end of the driveway outside McNamara’s Pictou County home.

During the trial, Hartling said the gun went off accidentally and that he only raised the gun to show McNamara he had one after seeing McNamara reach behind his back for what the court heard was a can of bear spray.

Witnesses at the trial, the second after an earlier mistrial, talked about McNamara being concerned Hartling might be out to harm him, thinking he was involved in a robbery that resulted in the loss of marijuana plants from Hartling’s home.

After shooting McNamara, Hartling drove away and hid the gun and ammunition.

Despite initially denying any involvement, before the day was over Hartling would confess to being at McNamara’s house, saying that the gun, loaded and cocked with the safety off, fired without him pulling the trigger.

During the appeal, heard Jan.22, Hartling’s lawyers argued that the verdict was tainted by errors in the jury charge. There were also complaints about rulings on certain evidence, guidelines given to the jury about some evidence and the decision to not allow testimony from several witnesses.

Writing on behalf of justices Linda Oland and David Farrar, Justice Duncan Beveridge wrote that while he agreed “that the trial judge made some errors in his charge (to the jury) and should have given limiting instructions with respect to the bad character evidence heard by the jury,” he was “satisfied that, collectively, the complained-of errors caused no substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice.”

Beveridge also noted several of the points on which Hartling’s appeal was based were issues that his lawyer did not object to at the time of the trial.